Palmer Park Leisure Centre & Stadium

Positive experience: We went there for a birthday party and visited the soft play area. The whole building (at least the places we visited) are very clean and nice. The soft llay area is a tall structure that doesn't occupy such a large area but it can certainly accommodate quite a few children and was more than big enough for the party and the couple of children there which weren't part of the party. The only negative is that there was no-one in the coffee shop to cater to people for a long time. Also, not a negative, more a suggestion, but music playing would have made the experience much much better.

Fantastic experience: Great swimming pool, helpful staff and decent facilities.

Fantastic experience: Pool very clean, not that big but acceptable. Water temperature was great, once you start moving. Showers and changing rooms were acceptable. Pool is usually 80% empty before 9am on most weekdays for lane swimming.

Negative experience: They took duplicate payments from my account and cant refund them

Fantastic experience: Great gym with good lessons, highly recommended!

Positive experience: Have decent gym that is quite spacious. However, do not have the complete range of gym equipments.

Fantastic experience: Great new(ish) sports centre, run by Better UK for Reading Borough Council. Gym is well equipped and usually not too busy.

Fantastic experience: First time here and Hiten the guy at reception was nothing but wonderful. He sorted out our membership accounts and helped us book the facilities. Great facilities as well!

Fantastic experience: Thank you V for an outstanding Mindfulness class. I hope this can be a regular class - essential that Better supports mental as well as physical health. So disappointed not able to book again!

Fantastic experience: Best leisure Park in reading

Fantastic experience: Good park with loads to explore and has a cricket pitch too.

Negative experience: This review is about the Gym ONLY!!! I haven't even used any of the other services. If you're going to the leisure centre purely for the gym? It is not worth it. Student discounted membership is £37.45 for a month. Barely any equipment. 2 squat racks. 2 Cable machines. Their cable weight is so light too. They have also made very poor decisions with their machines. For example, they have two machines for shoulder press, but no machine for incline press. The Adductor/Abductor is combined into 1 single machine, and it is horrible to use. Their dumbbells only go up to 44kg. Of course the fill up half the gym with cardio equipment! And the other half is a huge empty square area for calisthenics/other workouts. The only positive thing I could say about this place, is it's convenient, as I live close. But the University gym (Sportspark), was much better. I hope management makes a change, because it is quite shocking

Negative experience: This 1-star rating is solely for the rude and unfriendly café staff member who stopped me from taking a photo of the soft play area in the most impolite way. Customer service is clearly not her strength!

Negative experience: Employees in this branch are disrespectful and uncooperative in dealing with children's parents Rivermaid branch is way more better

Fantastic experience: Fun time to be had for all ages. Highly recommend to come here!

Fantastic experience: Excellent centre with a great pool

Fantastic experience: Terrific facilities

Fantastic experience: Reading Roadrunners track session on a Wednesday night

Negative experience: I've been playing at the Palmer Park astro pitches (I believe managed by Better nowadays) for a few months now and nearly every week we experience the same problems with the lights going off mid-play. Yesterday we stopped playing 20 mins early due to this and no acknowledgement, refund offer or even apology was made by staff. Time to look for a new venue...

Negative experience: We play weekly 5-a-side football and the flood lights are failing every week for the last 3 months with no compensation given, just empty promises. Somehow it is still one of the most expensive places in Reading. Go somewhere else.

Negative experience: Do not touch this place for 5-a-side football. Being going here for the last three years and they still haven't resolved the issue of the lights going off with the staff not able to switch them back on. Multiple complaints have been lodged with no action deemed to have been taken.

Positive experience: Soft play area a little small and was not impressed had to pay over £5 due to being a third person as went with my son and grandson.

Fantastic experience: Well maintained pool and gym. There's also an athletics track and velodrome out the back.

Positive experience: One of the best parks in Reading to spend time with friends and family. The park has a good sand pit area for kids and an outdoor gym area for adults. The leisure centre is also very good. The swimming pool is a good one for beginners but not suitable for seasoned swimmers. The only downside is parking, if you come in any evenings (both weekdays or weekends) you will have a tough time finding a spot to park.

Negative experience: AC of the gym is not working from last two months and we are being charged full amount, and no initiative is being taken by management to fix the air conditioning issue. If this is not being fixed will be left with no choice but to move to other gym. This is serious health safety issue

Fantastic experience: First time inside since new building completed! Great facilities and friendly helpful staff

Positive experience: Lovely place

Positive experience: Sports facilities great for competition but took competing grandson for lunch and cafe closed from 1230 until 13.30. The place was packed!

Fantastic experience: Great place for swimming lessons for my kids very friendly staff very clean

Fantastic experience: It was my first visit to the Leisure Centre. It was very impressive. It has a running track and a lovely pool for people to learn to swim, plus other meeting rooms for keep fit classes.

Fantastic experience: We visited soft play there. Kids loved it wasn’t very busy on Saturday’s afternoon. Something that we never saw before at different soft plays is giant keyboard that you step on to play tunesgreat fun

Fantastic experience: Good for health

Positive experience: Soft play is good but the cafe is a bit pricey unless you're a bitcoin entrepreneur

Negative experience: This is in regards to the gym, it is a hefty expense to join this gym, and as the weather is getting hotter, the gym sits at a nice 22 degrees and 60% humidity, it is FAR too warm £36 per month is expensive for a gym that won’t run their air con The gym also lacks a lot of equipment and the layout is bizzare, I do like this gym but it’s only worth about £18-£20 per month not £36

Negative experience: Incredibly financially predatory behaviour of the practice. Originally signed up back in 2023 where the membership was £28 a month, fair price. Then when I had to cancel, I signed up again March 2024 and the price went to £32.50. Slight rise, but completely happy with that. Found out my account had been cancelled outside of my knowledge, called through to the helpline and they said even though the cancellation was pending there was nothing they would do about it and I would have to sign up again. After checking the pricing, the membership of "Better Health Centre - G, S & C" has been removed from their system. You can only buy a borough and district wide membership for this place. The price for that has shot up to £44 a month! That's a third more expensive in 2 months. The gym itself is quite small so I'm not sure how they can justify that especially with the few machines they have outside of cardio. If you are concerned about money (and who isn't in this environment) go to pure gym or some other gym, this one is not right.

Fantastic experience: Newly built and well hygienic place in our area.Highly recommend for children parties,swimming, gym and much more.

Fantastic experience: Soft play area really needs to be kept clean at all times.Considering little children who may pick up food lying on the floor.

Negative experience: Nice venue, but it’s a shame the reception lady isn’t very friendly.

Positive experience: Nice venue, 25 metre swimming pool with helpful staff. Member of the Greenwich Better Group.

Fantastic experience: We had a wonderful birthday party organised at palmers park soft play. The staff are super helpful and the kids had a great time. Special shout out to Ruth , Jay and Finn for their amazing support on the day

Fantastic experience: Place is well maintained and not a bad size for a medium size kids party. Extra points to our host Lizzie who handled our special need boy like a champ and made it a great experience for us. Only problem was getting him out of there.

Fantastic experience: Amazing place compared by price. Them have app Better uk you can book all activities

Fantastic experience: Booked a soft play birthday party, Ruth and team at the centre were very supportive and helpful.

Negative experience: Poorly maintained and dangerous! They have acknowledged they have an issue with the lights going off randomly on the Astro turf pitches for 3 years but continue to rent the pitches without resolving the problem

Negative experience: Horrible experience with manager called Wendell who had a disgusting and rude attitude. We politely asked for help and he called my wife ignorant and rude for trying to explain to him what wasn’t working in the app. English isn’t her first language and instead of listening to her, he was hounding her to go outside to get service on her phone which we tried as per his request but didn’t work. She had full service. Lovely young man named Lucas came to apologise and resolved the actual issue within a minute. Wendell kept hounding away in the background saying ‘you need to listen to me’ belittling the staff around him. Stay away from Wendell, very rude and arrogant man in the wrong job.

Positive experience: Good enough, shame pool isn’t deeper.

Positive experience: The Leisure centre is modern but the football pitch is atrocious.

Positive experience: It's okay, I'll be honest, it feels poorly ran, 2nd time we've booked swimming and we had to wait an extra 15 minutes. When we had booked it yesterday as well, for some reason they thought it would be funny to laugh at each other whilst we're being served unprofessional.

Positive experience: Great facility but horrible cafe services. The people working at the cafe can take up to 30 minutes literally to sell you an item off the shelf. I've never seen such incompetence and laziness in my life. I would have given this place 5 stars if it wasn't for the cafe.

Positive experience: My kid enjoys it everytime he comes here.

Negative experience: Nice and clean but don’t like swimming lessons ..is just good for beginners not for already knows swimming.need to make a level and look for targets.found poor management on the class and level Do not recommend for swimming lessons

Fantastic experience: Very nice and kind teacher( Jake ).Well trained staff . Also my daughter lost her gold pendant while swimming, but they kept it safe even after a week

Positive experience: Nice pool, not busy

Fantastic experience: Amazing pool and facilities! Lovely staff and so helpful. Thank you.

Negative experience: Due to rain the place was tooo messy and the rides were too fast for kids . I wasnt satisfied with the rides ...

Positive experience: Good place for leisure, swimming, gym, football, basketball, running etc

Positive experience: Facilities wise the leisure centre is very clean and well taken care of. The soft play is great and my child love it. However the booking system is awful, particularly for swimming. Reading is severely lacking in swimming pools and considering this was hyped as being one of the new, main swimming pools, it's disappointing. There is hardly any availability or ability to book in advance, especially for the toddler splash and free swim. You spend a lot of time trying to find days in the month with availability only for 95% to be unavailable. Its not clear if unavailable means fully booked or just not able to yet book but either way considering this is one of only a few pools in Reading currently open, it's disheartening to know that booking in is so convoluted.

Positive experience: a wonderful park that has absolutely everything for entertainment and sports for the whole family

Fantastic experience: This place is recently refurbished and rebuilt, with an open stadium, a new gym, and a new pool

Fantastic experience: Small gym but never busy and a great location

Fantastic experience: A massive modern transformation of Palmer Park and newly built leisure centre makes it even more attractive and offers families and parents even more compelling reasons to join in. Wonderful and friendly staff. Highly recommended.

Negative experience: Parking at this venue is chargeable after 3 hours, beware and don't get caught out. I parked here in June and went over the 3 hours by 9 mins. I didn't realise it was chargeable as there were no signs in the main parking area, or in the sports centre. I challenged my fine on grounds of lacking signage or advertising the price of parking or in fact need to pay. I found one small sign on my return as you entered. However the day I visited a coach had parked just past the sign. My appeal was refused. But on returning today I noted signage in all parking areas has now been installed. I'll be taking this one to The Ombudsman. Want to charge me £100 for pointing out your failings... Not cricket at all

Fantastic experience: Clean. Lovely. Can get busy on weekends in the park though.

Fantastic experience: Nice gym

Positive experience: Only less stars because of the admin staff

Positive experience: Yes the swimming pool was good and a nice coffee after a swim is very good.

Positive experience: It was the Youngest's school sports day and as they have no outside grass at the school, it was held here at the stadium. It's exactly what it says on the tin, an athletics stadium! (I am assuming that at weekends and professional meets that it has concession stands etc and not just the one standpipe I noticed, that made it quite clear it was for the grass and not My @rse? )

Fantastic experience: A great swimming pool, and a good gym too. I've always been a bit nervous about exercising publicly, but I've been going here for a few weeks now and have never felt less than comfortable!

Fantastic experience: Very well maintained and wonderful soft play area. This is the right place for indoor play area for a busy one hour with the kids.

Positive experience: Good facility, but it really needs wifi, especially for the gym

Fantastic experience: This place is recently refurbished and rebuilt, with an open stadium, a new gym, and a new pool. It is great to bring your family. Staff is friendly, I know for sure because I am part of it

Fantastic experience: Lovely place and friendly staff.

Fantastic experience: Windrush day was an amazing celebration at the park yesterday

Negative experience: The facilities are good, but the staff are unapproachable, rude and uninterested. On approaching the desk I am routinely questioned on why I am here, even after I have beeped through with a card. Staff can be heard using bad language in the foyer area around younger children. Not really acceptable, it may be a minority of staff but disappointing to witness in such a nice facility.

Positive experience: Excellent park and leisure centre that has been newly built. Has a large swimming pool, Softplay area, outside running tracks and features that I only just noticed the other day ... an outside gymnasium with multi weight️‍♀️ ️‍♂️ that's very clean and easy to use. I hope this encourages me to venture to the gym more regularly!

Fantastic experience: It was such a nice place which is basically good for support especially for schools

Fantastic experience: Fabulous pool. Love the swim lanes

Positive experience: Good size facility there is a running track available to use as well as a new gym space and brand new 25m pool ,it's got shared changing area (cubicles) and lockers for your items to be stored in (need a pound to be used,like the trolleys at shops) . Different classes and sessions are available to book and the membership is a fair price . The better health company offer an app to help with booking and viewing their centers which is easy to use . overall a nice place and nice atmosphere to come and exercise

Fantastic experience: Very good

Fantastic experience: Fantastic facilities. Love the book on demand option for swimming. My 2.5 year old daughter and I been using it for the ast 7 months almost on weekly basis and sometimes twice. So we absolutely reccomend - free 3 hours parking and playground is great after kids swim Perfect for little ones play dates

Fantastic experience: I just love that place but something that’s just terrible was going to gym last night actually I know the timings that it’s till 10pm so I decided to go to the gym 8.30 and when I was just sitting in the cafe chairs just to get relax some random person just came and kept walking around me and when I was about to leave he waited outside, infront of the entrance/exit and that was really horrible… so I don’t really think that going night time is best idea for girls… so be careful girls just avoid as per my view…

Positive experience: I have only used the gym so this is my review of the gym. The gym is brand new and the equipment and machines are really good. However, it does get really hot in the gym due to the walls consisting of big glass windows, making it very very warm and uncomfortable to work out in. Management should increase the AC to counteract this. Additionally, while there is a good range of equipment i feel there is not enough to target every muscle group. Unless I haven’t noticed it, I haven’t found a bicep or tricep machine. You can always use dumbbells to exercise those muscles but sometimes I do prefer to use machines. Additionally there is no smith machine. However, this criticism is relative to the exercises you enjoy. If you are someone who enjoys hip thrusts with a barbell I have found that plates are a bit small, so it’s a struggle getting them them to roll up your legs with ease, putting me off this exercise. Again, this is relative to your exercising. Overall, this is a nice gym and it doesn’t get too busy, however, minor improvements and additional equipment would make it even better.

Fantastic experience: There are range of activities to do at this leisure centre for all ages. A very good family day out with advantage of Palmer playground if weather is good. We attended this as part of Reading’s Children Festival. They have arranged indoor activities such as soft play, swimming, gingerbread icing and clay modelling. Whilst for outdoor they had cycling, bouncy castle and mini athletics. Kids loved swimming arrangements made by Nicholas. Thank you to all the staff for taking efforts and making amazing day for kids. Keep it up

Positive experience: Love the facilities and adds to the centre that it’s brand new! We’ve only used the pool for baby classes - only criticism I will add is they need more baby changing facilities - 2 when you have back to back children’s swimming classes doesn’t make much sense. It’s hard enough trying to get a baby out of swimming stuff, changed and yourself clothes without having to do in a tiny cubicle with a small bench.

Fantastic experience: An investment worth while with affordable monthly membership prices. I'm not keen that you must have a smart phone to access the gym with your barcode but it does make it efficient I suppose. The facilities are good quality and spacious. My only suggestion would be to add the athletics track in the membership cost as it's over £6 per go and deters people from running.

Fantastic experience: swimming pool is very good and accessible for our daughter

Fantastic experience: Excellent staff and great gym

Positive experience: Great leisure centre. Athletics grounds decent too.

Positive experience: Exelent place if you want to do sports although the stands are prone to getting wet

Negative experience: Staff not very helpful,parking very bad for medic staff trying to do their job covering sports events in the stadium. It was much easier before the rebuild.

Fantastic experience: Recently found this lovely swimming pool Very clean with lovely showers and changing rooms A machine to dry you costume and hairdryers Very impressed Helpful staff to Find I have to book a swim for all with plenty of notice as they get booked up

Fantastic experience: Liked the new play area, although the sand pit area needs some attention (trip hazard the cafe in the new venue was welcoming and pleased with the location. Didn't need to go through the centre to get to the cafe.

Fantastic experience: Beautiful new pool, gym, and fitness class facilities. The classes and pool get booked up quickly, so get organised and don’t assume you can just walk up!

Negative experience: Facility is overall good, although missing a sports hall which is a shame. The main reason for this review is the frustration around trying to book classes. I go on to the app first thing in the morning and all the sessions are fully booked. The pool also appears to sit empty many an evening around 6pm which is peak time for people who work. I would ask the management to put on additional classes and open the pool more often please.

Positive experience: Recently refurbished Gym, well equipped and good atmosphere. Doesn't get too busy.

Negative experience: Looks lovely, service are nice but I just wondering how ofter you clean the soft play area . Looks disgusting when you get closer. DUST DUST DUST everywhere !!!!! Shocking especially when you have a baby with allergies to a DUST.

Fantastic experience: Really great new development at Palmer Park. Plenty of free car parking close to the building and what a great range of facilities. Soft play for the kids and a decent sized swimming pool. Cafe and gym for the adults. Spacious, light and clean with good service from the staff. A good place to visit especially when it’s wet and cold outside.

Positive experience: Great place has its own cycling track indoor area and all

Fantastic experience: Great new swimming pool. Ice center, clean, efficient and very well maintained

Fantastic experience: Nice pool and clean changing rooms